Infants practice spelling - ready for halloween

This is a necropost - resurrected from a scan of a newspaper found on a backup of a CD in a long-forgotten cupboard. I wonder where the other kids are now?

By EVE SWEETING

IF YOU want to turn somebody into a spider or a frog - halloween is the night to try out your spell.

Children at Witham's Chipping Hill Infants School are enjoying stretching their imaginations ready for October 31... when who knows what strange spirits will be abroad?

Terry Eden, aged six, who has already drawn a picture of a witch and her cat on a broomstick, has a spell ready. The potion, he says, should contain "an orange seed, the blood of a smelly human, the eye of a worm, the skin of a smelly python, two slimy slugs, a toadstool, a bat's wing and boiled smelly socks."

"It's a secret who I'm going to try it out on," he said.

Children at Chipping Hill are enjoying the fun of halloween. Four-year-old Andrew Manning grew a pumpkin from seed and the children have made it into pumpkin pie.

The skin has been carved into a halloween mask. "I didn't like the pumpkin pie," admitted Andrew.

All the children say halloween is fun rather than scary, though six-year-old Joanne Kirby admits she will be staying safely inside on October 31, just in case. She has made a paper witch. "I love stories about witches," she said.

Peter Hastie, aged six, has written a special halloween story - about a sad witch who was ugly with "crooked" hair. A spell by her cat brought her beauty. "So she bought the cat a tin of fish," said Peter.

"If I see a witch on hallowe'en I shall ask her to stay for tea," said Terry Eden.

Mark Cookson, six, also had a spell - for turning someone into a monster.

Anthony Bradley, four, had enjoyed stirring up the ingredients for the pumpkin pie. It contained pumpkin flesh, cinnamon and nutmeg, eggs, milk and sugar. No one seemed to like it much.